What Happens In India
by CatsbytheGreat
Summary: Q and Bond take on their first mission together.


**I.**

The briefing starts like this:

M asks, "Do you know who Raas Khan is?"

"Yes," Q says, at the same time as Bond says, "no." They look at each other and M looks as if he's struggling not to roll his eyes.

"Well, Khan has a plan to assassinate the Prime Minister and you must stop him."

"Why would anyone want to assassinate David Cameron?" Q asks.

"Why wouldn't they?" Bond retorts. He leans forward. "M, I appreciate your concern, but must I take Q with me?"

Q scoffs. "This country would have fallen long ago were it not for your quartermasters."

M shrugs. "His argument is flawless."

Bond glares at Q.

Q grins.

Without knowing it, the entirety of the country is depending on them. A scary thought.

**II.**

At check-in, through security, at the gate, and at boarding Q complains that he hates flying. Bond buys him a shot of vodka in the hopes that it will calm him down enough to shut up.

It doesn't.

"Cars are more dangerous than planes," Bond points out as Q grips his armrests as if he's holding onto them for dear life. The plane is currently in the process of taking off.

"I don't like cars, either," Q says.

"How are you a secret agent?"

"I'm smart. How are you one?"

"I'm not afraid of cars. Nor planes. Or anything."

"Some might call that stupidity."

Bond straightens his tie. "Most people call that bravery."

Q adjusts his glasses. "Most people are stupid."

They try to spend as little time as possible talking for the rest of the flight, for the sake of the other passengers.

**III.**

Bond and Q arrive in India during the morning, and they end up at a swanky hotel (Q's words) in the middle of Mumbai.

The hotel room is modern, full of rich colors, and has two beds. As soon as they set their bags down Q asks, "So, how many women do you plan on sleeping with this trip?"

"What?"

"Well, I have to know how often I'm going to be locked out of the room."

Bond glares at Q. "That's not my job, sleeping with women," he says.

Q starts unpacking his laptop. "Really?" he says. "I was beginning to think it might be."

Later, they get ready to infiltrate a party of Khan's, when Bond looks at Q and notices he's wearing sweater and slacks, and frowns.

"Can't you look a bit less like a college student and more…sophisticated?" Bond asks.

Q looks down at his outfit, then at Bond, who is in a full suit and bowtie. "Glasses are sophisticated," he says after a moment.

"No, they really aren't."

Q sighs and heads into the bathroom to change.

He manages to put together a button down shirt and tie to go with his slacks, but the glasses stay. Bond starts to wish that Moneypenny were here, but she's out of the field, as it were.

Unfortunate.

"Have you got a gun?" Bond asks, while strapping his own in.

"Of course," Q says. "And a few other tricks up my sleeve."

"Let's hope we don't need your tricks," Bond says.

Q walks past him towards the door, grinning. "You'd be dead without them."

**IV.**

This is what they need: they need to get a tracker on Khan. They need to find his terrorist organization and kill him. And preferably his employees, but Bond will take what he can get.

He isn't expecting the mission to go well.

The party is full of the rich and famous of India. Bond makes his introductions, and he's intrigued to see that Q introduces himself as "Q," no fake name, no real name, nothing to go on. Perhaps that is a good idea, but it also makes certain guests give him a weird look.

Q mentions that he is in the business of making weapons (half true, at any rate) and one of the guests asks him if he would like to see Khan. He talks to Khan briefly, shakes his hand, and Bond doesn't know what happens during that brief exchange but Q comes back grinning like a kid at Christmas and he feels less than reassured that he'll make it back within the next three days.

Q goes off to his own corner, where a young woman nursing a drink accosts him (that's literally the only description; Q looks intimidated rather than aroused.) Bond murmurs into his communications device, "Is everything all right?"

"Peachy," Q replies. Bond casts a look at him and Q sends a glare his way. Bond ends up flirting with a tall Indian woman a few moments later when Q speaks in his ear again. "Bond, do you hear me?"

"Yes I hear you," Bond snaps, annoyed because he and this woman were actually hitting it off. Q reminds him that not only will he not be sleeping with her tonight, but he will not be sleeping with anyone at all this trip because he and Q are sharing a room.

"Well, Khan just left the room. I thought you were too busy staring at that woman's chest to know that," Q says.

Bond tells the woman he has to go and walks over to Q, who jerks his head towards a door behind the bar. The two discreetly slip inside.

The door leads to a darkened hallway (doesn't it always?) and Bond feels for his gun. Behind him, Q says, "Go left."

Bond goes left and then follows Q's instructions from there. The building is a maze, and Khan seems to be traveling below ground now, and Q is trying to lead them as best as he can.

"How did you get the tracker on him, anyway?" Bond asks.

"I slipped it up his jacket sleeve when I shook his hand," Q says.

Bond sighs as they round another corner, guns now drawn. "Why can't we just blow the place up?"

"Blowing up a building lacks a certain finesse," Q says. "It isn't how MI6 operates."

"Bloody hell it isn't," Bond mutters, but he decides that they'll go with Q's plan now and ditch it when everything goes pear-shaped. He doesn't like the idea of simply following Khan, but neither of them has come up with a better plan and Q did take some sort of initiative, so they might as well take advantage of it.

Eventually they end up in an underground tunnel, and Q gestures towards a steel door on the right side and whispers, "He's in there."

There is a keypad next to the door, and Q makes short work of the code. Bond tries not to seem impressed, but he can't help but feel relieved that Q at least knows something, and Q has a small little grin on his face. Cocky arse.

For good measure, Bond kicks open the door.

Khan stands on the other side, and behind him, a huge display full of computers.

The various screens and codes reflect in Q's eyes. He looks amazed.

Bond aims his gun, less impressed.

Khan turns around and smiles at both of them. "Mr. Bond," he says, spreading his arms in greeting, "Mr. Q, so happy you could join me."

"The pleasure is mine," Bond says. "Unfortunately, I need something from you that you won't be too happy to give, I'm sure. The plans to kill the Prime Minister."

Khan laughs. "Ah, yes. I expected you would want something like that. But this isn't what I had in mind."

"What did you have in mind?"

"This." Khan, hands behind his back, flips open something and presses a button. A countdown begins on screen. "the building will blow in ten minutes, the information with it."

"You'll stop it because you're in the building," Q says from the door.

"I don't think you realize how this works," Khan says. "The villain never reveals his secrets."

"Oh for god's sake," Bond snaps, and shoots Khan in the head.

Khan falls to the ground with a satisfying thud. Q runs forward, running his hands through his hair. (One hand still holds his gun, so that he looks as if he's in danger of shooting himself.)

"Why did you do that?" Q yells. "He could have stopped the explosion! Do you just solve all your problems by shooting everyone who annoys you in the head?"

"Yes," Bond answers, grabbing Q by the arm, "but that's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"I need you to hack into Khan's computer, find the information about the assassination, send it to the MI6 offices, and then stop the bomb from going off."

"In ten minutes?" Q stares at him. "Are you crazy?"

Bond shoves him towards the computers. "We'll both be dead if you don't start now, so start working on it."

Q grits his teeth. He has no good retort, so he settles with, "I hate you," and gets to work.

Bond aims his gun at the door, because surely Khan's death hasn't gone unnoticed. The man has security. Someone probably saw.

Q types away on the computers, muttering to himself. Bond can't be bothered to listen; he just hopes that he figures everything out on time.

Two minutes in, the first guard starts shooting at Bond. One of the bullets hits part of the computer, sending sparks flying.

"Bond!" Q yells. "For god's sake, do your bloody job."

"Only if you do yours," Bond snaps, and shoots the guard in front of him.

Three minutes, two more guards. It's hard to shoot them before they shoot at him and Q, and Bond hopes that all of them have as terrible aim as the first one.

He wonders why he didn't close the door.

Hindsight, as they say, is annoyingly clear.

Q yelps and Bond hits the fourth guard in the head.

"I sent the information!" Q calls out a moment later.

"That's great," Bond says. He shoots a guard, misses, and then the guard tackles him to the ground. Bond tries to aim his gun, but they struggle.

"Now for the bad news, Bond," Q adds.

"For fuck's sake-"

"I can't disable the bomb. Khan specifically programmed it that way."

Two other guards have arrived, and Bond hears gunshots. "Who does that?"

"Khan, apparently. We have to leave."

"I'm trying!"

Bond throws the guard off him and manages to regain hold of his gun. Behind him, Q shoots at two guards and a third (where are they all coming from?) grabs his arm and twists it back so that he drops his gun with a yell.

The guard puts his gun to Q's head.

The computer display shows that they have three minutes.

Q stares at Bond, the fear showing in his eyes, but he says, attempting to look impassive, "You'd better go."

Bond dispatches of two more guards. He could easily leave Q. Q isn't a proper agent, and there are plenty of people as smart as he is (six, Q said once) and their mission is done. Q has played his part.

But Bond is more than a heartless agent, so he takes aim. It's not a good shot; he could hit either one, and there are still other guards so he doesn't have time, and the man holding Q hostage is moving.

Bond knows quite a bit about taking the shot anyway.

So he does.

**V.**

On reflection, Bond thinks it could have gone a lot worse. M shouldn't be angry that eighty three people died and one of Mumbai's taller buildings was destroyed.

After all, the information they needed was obtained, and the Prime Minister is safe. For now.

Bond thinks that it's a job well done. And so does Q, even if Q has come out worse for wear. Neither of them are complaining. They're not body parts scattered on the streets of Mumbai, after all, and that's something.

Things sound a bit…bad, when described to M, but they really weren't. So they allowed Khan to self-destruct the building, and so Bond shot Khan in the head rather than apprehending him. And then shot Q because he missed the guard holding Q, but it created enough of a distraction for Q to grab the guard's gun and shoot the guard before they ran like hell out into the streets and watched the building explode.

And Bond had said, "I think we did well."

And Q had replied, clutching his bleeding arm, "I did well. You blew up a building and shot me."

"Khan blew up the building."

"Have you been taking shooting lessons from Moneypenny?"

"Khan blew up the damn building."

"And you shot Khan. I think you're even."

Eventually they got Q to a hospital, had his wound fixed up, and then flew home to report to M.

Q took a few days off. Bond was given a brief leave-of-absence because he shot a fellow agent.

The Prime Minister isn't dead. That's a job well done, in Bond's eyes.

He's destroyed much more for much less.

**VI.**

Bond and Q don't talk until they both come back into work, and M sits between them and suggests that they talk it out.

Bond isn't sure what they have to talk out. Q still has a bandaged arm. "Apparently the bullet shattered my wrist."

"Shame," Bond says. "Must be awful for typing."

"The worst." Q adjusts his glasses. "I'm sure the guilt is just killing you."

"Just." Bond takes a sip of water he wishes were brandy and looks at M. "Why are we here?"

"I need you two to kiss and make up so you can work together," M snaps. "You're bloody useless by yourselves." He stands up and talks out of the room, leaving the two agents alone.

Bond looks at Q, and Q looks at Bond, and then Bond says, "You're not going to shoot me on our next mission, are you?"

Q smirks. "You're the one pulling the triggers. I carry out the more sophisticated parts of the mission."

"Somehow that isn't reassuring."

"Bond, if I wanted to destroy you I would have already done so. Shooting me is not the worst thing you could have done, and I understand why you didn't."

Bond raises an eyebrow. "What's the worst thing I could have done?"

"Destroyed my computer. Or broken my glasses. Have you noticed the folder M left behind?"

Bond picks up the thin manila folder and opens it. "That sneaky bastard."

Q leans forward, curious. "Has M got something for us to do already?"

"Yes." Bond looks up. "New York. Are you up to it?"

Q smiles wide. "I've been terribly bored."

"Then let's get this over with."

Bond knows that Q is young and annoying and a bit arrogant and too smart in all the wrong ways, and he knows that he doesn't need Q to get the job done.

But Q makes the job more efficient, and faster, and he doesn't seem to mind that Bond shot him, which is always a plus.

New York will be fun. Bond will shoot people, and Q will practice the fine art of finesse, and they will keep the world from falling apart, even if they blow up a few buildings in the process.


End file.
